BOOK REVIEW: From a Certain Point of View

written by David Steffen

From a Certain Point of View is a short story anthology media tie-in to the Star Wars universe, released in October 2017 by Del Rey.  To celebrate 40 years of Star Wars, the anthology contains 40 stories that take place in or around the events of the original Star Wars film released in 1977, but from the point of view from a supporting character.  All of the author’s proceeds for the book go to the charity First Book that provides books, teaching materials, and other essentials to educators and organizations serving children in need.

Most anthologies I’ve read contain stories that are either loosely connected by themes (an anthology of vampire stories, or alien love stories, or mad scientist stories, or stories of marginalized groups in history, etc…), or might be based in some kind of shared speculative world but which aren’t really part of same arc, or which are not really connected at all. This anthology felt very different to me in that the shape of the anthology as a whole has an arc, and it’s an arc most geeks are familiar with, the arc of the original Star Wars film.  But it’s a story arc as told through negative space.  Instead of following the story of Luke Skywalker meeting Obi-Wan Kenobi and hiring help from Han Solo and Chewbacca and rescuing Leia Organa and destroying the Death Star, this anthology read from start to finish tells that story, but through those affected by the actions of the heroes and villains we are most familiar with.  This is a great use of the Star Wars mythology because an anthology like this can only reach its full effect if the audience is familiar with the original arc, so that they can understand the significance of how these secondary characters affect and are affected by the events shown in the movie itself.  It’s a great idea, well executed, by some of the best contemporary short story authors.

Some of the stories are what you would expect from Star Wars stories: full of action and intrigue and that sort of thing, with rebels as heroes  But the ones that really stood out to me were the oddball stories, the ones with an arc that didn’t follow the usual Star Wars arc, the ones that did something funny or unexpected.  I’ll mention a few of my favorites of these with a brief teaser for each.

“The Sith of Datawork” by Ken Liu
From the point of view of an Imperial bureaucrat aboard the Star Destroyer Devestator.  He is approached by a friend who was the gunner who chose not to shoot down the escape pod carrying R2-D2 and C3PO from the Tantive IV, afraid he will be punished for his choice he uses the power of bureaucracy to justify his friend’s choice.

“The Red One” by Rae Carson
From the point of view of the red astromech unit that Uncle Lars initially purchases from the Jawas, we find out more about went on in the sandcrawler, and between this droid and R2D2, and what preceded its fateful malfunction.

“Not For Nothing” by Mur Lafferty
Written in the form of a “Behind the Music” sort of feature that you might read in Rolling Stone or see on VH1, from the point of view of a member of the Modal Nodes band that is playing a the Mos Eisley cantina during the movie.

“Born in the Storm” by Daniel José Older
Written from the point of view of one of the storm troopers sent to Tatooine to look for the droids, and written in the form of an incident report.  The irreverent attitude of the storm trooper made this story a lot of fun, and though I was skeptical that he would take such an attitude, it all made sense in the end.

“An Incident Report” by Mallory Ortberg
I think this might be my favorite in the book.  After Darth Vader Force-chokes Admiral Motti for insolent comments that the Death Star is all the Empire needs, this story is the incident report Admiral Motti writes up for the Imperial human resources department, a very peevishly toned note complaining about the incident, while trying to make it clear he’s not discriminating on the basis of religion.

 

The only thing that didn’t quite hit right in the book is that with the density of stories in the Mos Eisley cantina involving the same characters, several of them conflicted with each other, especially around the activities of Greedo and how good of a bounty hunter he actually was.  I’m guessing the stories were largely written independently with general guidelines, so the authors didn’t have direct contact, but the only thing off about the book was the clear continuity conflicts revealed there.

This book was a lot of fun, and a unique take on short story collections that took a different angle than any other I’d read before (which is probably only possible with a well known franchise like this).  I highly recommend it.

 

The Best of Clarkesworld 2017

written by David Steffen

Another great year for Clarkesworld, lots of great stories by authors both familiar and new.  Clarkesworld remains the most prolific of the podcasts I listen to, clocking in at 82 stories for the year of 2017, and with a much higher wordcount limit than most of the others, that comes to significantly more words.  Neil Clarke continues as editor, and Kate Baker continues to produce, host, and narrate most of the episodes of the podcast.

They continue to publish monthly stories published from Chinese through a relationship with StoryCom, which have been among many of my favorites.

Every short story that is eligible for Hugo nominations this year which were first published by Clarkesworld are marked with an asterisk (*), novelettes are marked with a double-asterisk (**).

The List

1.  “The Secret Life of Bots” by Suzanne Palmer**
A maintenance bot is given the major task of dealing with a major invading bioform on a ship, and is forced to consider the utility of improvisation.

2.  “Who Won the Battle of Arsia Mons?” by Sue Burke **
Battlebots on Mars become a major reality program.

3.  “A Series of Steaks” by Vina Jie-Min Prasad**
A 3-D printer forger is coerced under dire threat into forging a banquet of fine steaks for a major wedding.

4.  “Some Remarks on the Reproductive Strategy of the Common Octopus”  by Bogi Takács*
Octopus hive minds overcome the obstacles to octopus higher learning.

5.  “Second Person, Present Tense” by Daryl Gregory
Science has shown that our lower brain functions “decide” what we’re going to do a fraction of a second before we have made the “conscious” decision.  A new drug lengthens that delay indefinitely, making us question our definition of consciousness.

6.  “The Bridgegroom” by Bo Balder**
A new caretaker of an intelligent bridge is tempted by its seductive words to betray those who employed him for that purpose.

7.  “The Blood of a Martian” by Allen M. Steele
A hired guide on Mars takes a researcher to take DNA samples of the native Martians to determine how closely related they are to humans.

8.  “The Waiting Stars” by Aliette de Bodard
Heartfelt explorations of the effects of imposing someone’s culture onto a person from another culture.  This is one from de Bodard’s Xuya universe.

Honorable Mentions

“Shiomah’s Land” by Nisi Shawl

“Bonding With Morry” by Tom Purdom

“The Psychology Game” by Xia Jia, translated by Emily Jin and Ken Liu*

 

 

The Best of Glittership

written by David Steffen

GlitterShip is a science fiction and fantasy podcast devoted to publishing audio versions of LGBTQ stories from authors of all backgrounds.  Glittership was originally funded by a Kickstarter campaign in 2015, which blew past its base goal and reached several stretch goals beyond that increased the frequency of episodes as well as funding original episodes to be mixed in with the reprints.

Glittership is published, edited, and produced by Keffy R.M. Kehrli.  If you follow Diabolical Plots and you recognize Keffy’s name, he’s also a writer whose stories have featured multiple times on previous Best Of podcast lists right here.

Glittership features short story authors you are probably already familiar with, and others that might be entirely new to you.  Every story has major characters that are unambiguously within the umbrella of LGBTQ, but that’s not necessarily the focus of the plot of every story (though it might be sometimes).  I’ve really enjoyed the podcast largely because I think that having a podcast with a broad range of story topics and types that include characters from this range of demographics can help normalize stories about these demographics, so that they feel less and less like the “other” and just become accepted as more stories that might be rip-roaring adventures or introspective literary stories or any number of other stories, not just defined by that single characteristic.  Keffy has done a great job picking a variety of types of stories to show the variety of stories that can be called LGBTQ stories, and I am happy to help spread the word.

While Keffy generally doesn’t get into a lot of current politics in the episode commentary, it’s also worth checking out the intro to this episode which aired shortly after the US presidential election in 2016 about why he has decided to keep making the podcast.

This list covers the entire history of Glittership thus far since the first episode went live in April 2015.  49 episodes have been published to date, including a few multiple-story episodes, for a total of 55 stories.  The latest issue has just started.  Each issue is first available as an ebook for purchase, and then all of the stories are published on the podcast over the following several months, so if you want to read ahead, you can take advantage of that.

Every short story that is eligible for Hugo nominations this year which were first published by Glittership are marked with an asterisk (*), novelettes are marked with a double-asterisk.

The List

1.  “Sooner Than Gold” by Cory Skerry
A thief is enslaved by an enchantment to run errands for an unknown master.  They finally get the chance to know to meet their enslaver.

2.  “Seventh Day of the Seventh Moon” by Ken Liu
Legends tell of the daughter of the Emperor of Heaven and her lover separated by the River of Heaven who are reunited for one night a year.  The protagonists of the story are chosen to be lifted up by birds to heaven to meet the legendary lovers.

3.  “The Little Dream” by Robin M. Eames*
Sylvia’s superpowers of a minor variety are nice enough on the days that they work, which are also the days when her body is more cooperative.

4.  “The End of the World in Five Dates” by Claire Humphrey
When you can see the end of the world coming… why take care of yourself?

5.  “The Pond” by Aimee Ogden*
Messages from a lost child appear to his mother on the ice of the pond where he died.

6.  “Into the Nth Dimension” by David D. Levine
The nefarious Dr. Diabolus’s newest invention transports the superhero of our story into the “real” world.

Honorable Mentions

“For She is the Stars and the Sun Revolves Around Her” by Agatha Tan

“And the Blood of Dead Gods Will Mark the Score” by Gary Kloster

“How to Become a Robot in 12 Easy Steps” by A. Merc Rustad

 

 

 

The Best of Clarkesworld 2016

written by David Steffen

Another great year for Clarkesworld, lots of great stories by authors both familiar and new.  Clarkesworld remains the most prolific of the podcasts I listen to, clocking in at 83 stories for the year of 2016, and with a much higher wordcount limit than most of the others, that comes to significantly more words.  Neil Clarke continues as editor, and Kate Baker continues to produce, host, and narrate most of the episodes of the podcast.

They continue to publish monthly stories published from Chinese through a relationship with StoryCom.  This has had a wonderful result, as I’ve very much enjoyed finding new Chinese authors in translation through Clarkesworld, and you can clearly see the effect on this list.

All of the stories that are eligible for the Nebulas and Hugos are marked with an asterisk (*) if they are Clarkesworld originals, or a double-asterisk (**) if they were first published elsewhere in 2016 and then reprinted in Clarkesworld.

The List

1. “The Snow of Jinyang” by Zhang Ran, translated by Ken Liu and Carmen Yiling Yan*
Alternate history with the city of Jinyang holding many anachronistic technologies (including an internet!).  Apparently this is a whole subgenre of Chinese science fiction, and I want to read more of it!

2.  “Everybody Loves Charles” by Bao Shu, translated by Ken Liu*
Celebrity racer Charles is one of the most popular people int he world, owing in large part to his live-casting of his whole life, that anyone can come along for the ride.  But how can he have any kind of real romance, living like that?

3.  “Against the Stream” by A Que, translated by Nick Stember*
There is a rare condition where, after living one’s live normally, one abruptly starts to live it in reverse day by day.

4.  “The Calculations of Artificals” by Chi Hui, translated by John Chu*
In a world that appears like ours, but where most of the people are constructs meant only to be convincing for those few real people, the protagonist of this story is in charge of making sure this all runs smoothly.

5.  “Rusties” by Nnedi Okorafor and Wanuri Kahiu*
A girl befriends a rusty, one of the automated traffic control bots, known for their rusty appearance.

6.  “Chimera” by Gu Shi, translated by S. Qiouyi Lu and Ken Liu*
A young boy is horribly hurt in a car accident, and his scientistmother uses her developing research to save his life.

7.  “The Dark City Luminous” by Tom Crosshill**
One of the world’s best Augmented Reality developers, who has helped change the world to a complete AR experience to reskin the world however you like, and they soon won’t be able to use the AR themselves.

8.  “The Next Scene” by Robert Reed*
The aliens have come, and they’ve remade the economy and social order of the world to reward citizens for making entertaining drama for them.

Honorable Mentions

“Reef” by Paul McAuley

“Afrofuturist 419” by Nnedi Okorafor

“The Fixer” by Paul McAuley

“The Governess With the Artificial Womb” by Leena Likitalo

 

 

Hugo Novelette Review: Folding Beijing by Hao Jingfang, transl by Ken Liu

written by David Steffen

“Folding Beijing” is one of the Hugo Finalists for the novelette category this year.   It was published by Uncanny Magazine, a magazine that debuted in 2015, and you can read it here in its entirety.

In the future, Beijing is not just one city, but three.  The five million residents of First Space have the city for 24 hours at a time and have the most enviable prestigious jobs.  The twenty-five million residents of Second Space have the city for 16 hours at a time and have jobs of middling prestige and power and pay.  The fifty million residents of Third Space struggle to scrap out a living, and mostly spend their time sorting the recycling of the other two spaces.  One of the three is active at a time, and during that time the residents of the other two sleep in a deep drugged sleep with their buildings folded up tightly underground and out of the way.

Lao Dao is a sorter of recyclables in Third Space, but he has been offered a rare and lucrative employment opportunity by a contact in Second Space to deliver a message to a person in First Space.  Generally movement between the spaces is highly restricted, especially movement from the lower class spaces to the higher class spaces, but it is possible to avoid the drugged sleep of transition and to ride the folding pieces of the city to move from Third Space to First Space.  Lao Dao explores the normally hidden upper class facets of the city, trying to figure out what choices are best in this foreign space where people don’t have to scrimp for money.

I thought the premise for this was really clever, and I got the impression that it was based in a good understanding of the economics of the class system that would support the city’s economy (I don’t have much knowledge of macroeconomics, but it sounded plausible to me at least).  While such a mechanism would be cost-prohibitive and too dangerous for anyone to consider (even discounting the possibility of malfunction in self-collapsing buildings, consider the risks of not waking up from any kind of general anesthesia and applying that to tens of millions of citizens once every 2 days) I was willing to go with the flow for the sake of the interesting premise.

The setup of the story gave a good outsider’s perspective to explore the upper levels of the city’s classes.  Even though Lao Dao is a resident of the city and so is familiar with much of its layout and structure and social system, he has never actually been to First Space before, and the level of technology and privilege in that space is as foreign to him as anything could be.  I read this story with great interest from start to finish–a clever SF premise with a compelling human story at the center of it.  Well told, well translated, well done.

The Best of Clarkesworld 2015

written by David Steffen

Clarkesworld Magazine has had an incredible year.  As I wrote these lists I was considering my own Nebula and Hugo nomination ballots and much of my short fiction ballot come from Clarkesworld.  This year they’ve been publishing a monthly story translated from Chinese as part of an ongoing initiative to share more Chinese author’s works with the English reading fandom.  These stories have been a wonderful change of pace, different in some ways from what I’m used to in works written in English, something new and fresh.

The magazine continues to be edited and published by Neil Clarke and the podcast is hosted and most-often narrated by Kate Baker of the excellent voice.

Clarkesworld published 78 stories in 2015

The List

1. “Today I am Paul” by Martin L. Shoemaker
This is my top story pick for 2015 across all publications.  It is told from the point of view of a personal caretaker android designed to empathize and to emulate family members of an Alzheimer’s patient so that she can live at home.  Solid emotional story with lots of good stuff to think about.

2. “When Your Child Strays From God” by Sam J. Miller
This story chronicles the journey of a mother and pastor’s wife to find her son who has disappeared,  leaving traces of a popular telepathic drug behind.  She takes some of the drug, which links her telepathically to her son, and she goes to find him… knowing full well that while the drug’s effect last she is vulnerable to her son’s personable boogeyman.  A great story of empathy and bravery and doing everything for family.

3. “So Much Cooking” by Naomi Kritzer
Formatted as a cooking blog, at first I thought I wouldn’t like this story.  But the format proved very effective for this story of a spreading pandemic as a food blogger tries to take care of her family and still keep her blog going while supplies and travel are severely limited.

4. “Summer at Grandma’s House” by Hao Jingfang, translated by Carmen Yiling Yan
I like this one especially for its discussion of fate.  As it says right in the beginning of the story, when fate is discussed it is generally understood to be a script that we follow or that it doesn’t exist at all.  I find the explanation of fate given by this story to be much more interesting and also practical.

5.  “Ether” by Zhang Ran, translated by Carmen Yiling Yan and Ken Liu
This one might begin a little slow for those used to a “hook me immediately” attitude in publishing, this one was a bit of a slow boil but I thought it was well worth it in the end, and looking back the slow boil made total sense and wouldn’t have worked any other way.  It’s a kind of a dystopia story, though it doesn’t immediately seem that way.

6. “An Evolutionary Myth” by Bo-Young Kim, translated by Gord Sellar and Jihyun Park
A world where individual creatures can adapt to changing conditions in the world to become something wholly unique (yes I realize that’s not evolution by the scientific term, but this is a fun and interesting fantasy story not a hard SF tale).

7. “Cat Pictures Please” by Naomi Kritzer
Really interesting story about an AI interacting with people by influencing their web search results.  The title is a playful poke at the premise, and there is plenty of that in the story, but I also found it very heartfelt.

8. “Technarion” by Sean McMullen
Shortly after the discovery of radio, humans discover signals seemingly coming from the ether explaining how to build more and more complex computing machines.

 

 

Honorable Mentions

“Cassandra” by Ken Liu

“Mrs. Griffin Prepares to Commit Suicide Tonight” by A Que, translated by John Chu

“Daddy’s World” by Walter Jon Williams

“War, Ice, Egg, Universe” by G. David Nordley

 

Long List Anthology Kickstarter: The Home Stretch!

written by David Steffen

A City On It's Tentacles (1)It occurs to me 20 days into a 26 day Kickstarter campaign for the Long List anthology that I have not actually mentioned the Kickstarter campaign on my own website.  It has been a crazy 20 days and so much has been happening this particular thing has been postponed while I was working on other factors related to the campaign.  Well, better late than never, and with 6 days left in the campaign there is still some time for those who are interested to back the project to get their rewards and to help push toward the couple of remaining stretch goals.

You can read more detailed information on the Kickstarter page, but I’ll give a brief rundown here.

Purpose

Every year the Hugo Awards celebrate short stories (and other content) related to SF fandom as nominated and voted by supporters of WorldCon.  The works on the ballot receive a great deal of attention as they are distributed in a packet to voters and the voters discuss them.  Every year after the awards are given out, the Hugo administrators publish a longer list of nominated works which receive much less attention though they are also works that were greatly loved by the voting fanbase.  The purpose of the Long List anthology is to publish as many of the works from that longer list as possible.

Goals

The campaign’s base goal was relatively modest–only covering the purchase of nonexclusive reprint rights for the stories in the short story category, with stretch goals to add novelettes and novellas.  The campaign got off to big start with the base goal being reached just 2 days into the campaign, and the stretch goals being reached only a few days later.  Since the stretch goals were reached so early in the campaign I got to work making ever larger and ever more exciting stretch goals.  This added up to three stretch goals to produce an expand an audiobook of those stories for which audio rights could be acquired, produced by Skyboat Media who you may know as the folks who produce the excellent award-winning Lightspeed Magazine podcast.  The first of those goals has been reached, so there will be an audiobook which will contain 8-9 of the short stories.  There are two stretch goals remaining to add novelettes and novellas to the production.  I am very excited to have the opportunity to work with Skyboat Media–they have produced many of my favorite podcast fiction recordings and I am very excited to hear their productions.

Table of Contents

The following is the list of the table of contents of stories that will be part of the anthology.

Note that there will be 3 formats of the anthology:
1.  Ebook:  Will contain all of the stories (180,000 words of short fiction).
2.  Print book:  Will contain all of the short stories and all of the novelettes. May contain novellas depending on printing constraints. (around 140,000 words for short stories and novelettes)
3.  Audiobook:  Will contain at least 8-9 of the short stories (close to 40,000 words, which I think comes out to perhaps 4 hours of produced audio?), and if higher stretch goals are reached may contain novelettes and novellas which will add more content.

The following is the full list of stories:

Short Stories

  • “Covenant” by Elizabeth Bear
  • “This Chance Planet” by Elizabeth Bear
  • “Goodnight Stars” by Annie Bellet
  • “The Breath of War” by Aliette de Bodard
  • “The Truth About Owls” by Amal El-Mohtar
  • “When It Ends, He Catches Her” by Eugie Foster
  • “A Kiss With Teeth” by Max Gladstone
  • “Makeisha in Time” by Rachael K. Jones
  • “Toad Words” by T. Kingfisher
  • “The Vaporization Enthalpy of a Peculiar Pakistani Family” by Usman T. Malik

Novelettes

  • “The Magician and LaPlace’s Demon” by Tom Crosshill
  • “The Litany of Earth” by Ruthanna Emrys
  • “A Guide to the Fruits of Hawai’i” by Alaya Dawn Johnson
  • “The Bonedrake’s Penance” by Yoon Ha Lee
  • “A Year and a Day in Old Theradane” by Scott Lynch
  • “The Husband Stitch” by Carmen Maria Machado
  • “We are the Cloud” by Sam J. Miller
  • “Spring Festival: Happiness, Anger, Love, Sorrow, Joy” by Xia Jia, translated by Ken Liu
  • “The Devil in America” by Kai Ashante Wilson

Novellas

  • “The Regular” by Ken Liu
  • “Grand Jeté (The Great Leap)” by Rachel Swirsky

 

Rewards

There are a variety of backer rewards left for those who might be interested, listed briefly here.

  • Copies of ebook, print book, audiobook or combinations thereof.
  • A sonnet or sestina written by Ruthanna Emrys
  • A question for Rachel Swirsky which she’ll answer in a blog post
  • A “Women Destroy Science Fiction” (Lightspeed Magazine special edition) audiobook autographed by Gabrielle de Cuir
  • Special thank you within the audiobook
  • 11×17 poster prints of the wonderful cover art for the anthology “A City On Its Tentacles” by Galen Dara)
  • Custom digital art by Sam J. Miller in which he will sketch an animal of your choice in the occupation of your choice
  • Studio recording copy of the Long List anthology with director notes and narrator autographs
  • Audio recording of your story by voice actors Stefan Rudnicki, Wilson Fowlie, or Graeme Dunlop
  • Voice mail recording by voice actor Stefan Rudnick (of Skyboat Media)
  • Story critiques by Yoon Ha Lee, Anaea Lay, or me
  • Consultation with Skyboat Media regarding suitability of book for audiobook format
  • Lunch with Skyboat Media at WorldCon 2016 in Kansas City
  • Breakfast and watching recording session at Skyboat Media in Los Angeles
  • Audiobook co-producer credit

BOOK REVIEW (Conclusion): The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu (Translated by Ken Liu)

written by David Steffen

Less than a month ago, just before the Hugo Award voting deadline, I gave a preliminary review of the first 100 pages or so of the Hugo-nominated novel The Three Body Problem.  I gave the partial review then to get it published before the Hugo deadline, but since then I’ve finished reading.  This review will be pretty brief because I don’t want to spoil everything, and the truth about what exactly explains the weirdness that’s happened so far in the book takes a while to unroll.

As mentioned in the partial review, I thought the beginning was much too slow, going into a lot of background detail on a character who was important to the story but didn’t end up being the main point of view character.

I continued to especially enjoy the in-book game titled The Three Body Problem in it’s weird representation of a world with chaotic seasons, and generally found those sections more compelling than the other parts of the book.  The book in general is more distantly told than I prefer, often with the POV character bringing up a topic that he said he’d been planning with no prior note about it.  I’m not sure how much of that is a language or cultural difference in the expectations of storytelling but I was interested enough to keep reading.

I guess I hadn’t paid enough attention and hadn’t realized that this was book one of three until it ended.  Some things are resolved by the end of the book, but I wouldn’t call it a real complete story arc on its own–its very much a Part One, not a standalone story.  Without getting into spoilery specifics, I thought the tension kind of ramped down near the end, so I’m not really sure how that’s going to carry over into the next book.

I enjoyed reading the book, finding out what was behind the weird occurrences, and finding out more about the in-book game.  But with the generally slow and uneven pacing the ramp-down in tension near the end I’m not sure I’m into it enough to want to keep reading books two and three.

 

Hugo Novel Review (Partial): Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu (translated by Ken Liu)

written by David Steffen

I’ve been reading as fast as I can before the Hugo voting deadline on July 31st, but there’s been a bunch of things competing for my time  and so I haven’t been able to read as many of the nominees as I like.  I am only part way through The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu, translated by Ken Liu, published in English by Tor Books, but since the Hugo voting deadline is almost here I wanted to give a partial review–I’ll give a complete review when I have had the time to finish the book.

The story starts in China in 1967, during the Cultural Revolution (a social-political movement started by Mao Zedong whose stated goal was to preserve the “true” Communist ideology from the corrupting influences of capitalist and traditional elements from society.  Ye Zhetai is a physics professor at the time, trying to teach his students without coming under the ire of the movement, but in a debate about relativity he is struck dead.  His daughter Ye Wenjie follows in his footsteps, becoming a physicist as well, and ends up being recruited for a top-secret research project.

In the present day Wang Mao, a nanomaterials researcher, is called into a meeting between top researchers and military officials, where a list of physicists who has committed suicide is revealed, each for apparently the same reason, leaving long essays as suicide notes.  It has something to do with the organization called Frontiers of Science which are considered radical by the rest of the scientific community, to answer the question: “What is the limit of science?”  The implication seems to be that something about what they have found in their research is driving them to kill themselves.  He starts seeing elements pointing to a countdown in impossible places.  A countdown to what?  Wang Mao takes a position at the Frontiers of Science, and he sees fellow researcher Shen Yufei playing a game called The Three-Body Problem, which is based in a fictional world where there is no discernable pattern to the seasons and the challenge of the game is to find some pattern so that a civilization can be established in a stretch where the weather is favorable.

And that’s about as far as I’ve gotten in my reading.

The novel is very slow to begin.  It seems like half of what I’ve read so far didn’t have much relation to the other half, but I’m still in the first quarter of the novel so at this point I’m assuming it all ties together to justify that slow start.  I also figured that there might be some cultural differences about the expectations of story structure so I didn’t want to give up on the story until I’d given it a good long time.  I really felt like I got hooked as he was playing the Three Body Problem game, the details of that game and the strange challenges were interesting and caught my attention.  The problem of the physicists committing suicide has a bit of a Lovecraft feel to it–forbidden knowledge that drives one mad, though in general it feels more science fiction-y than horror-y.

Anyway, I’m interested in how it turns out, I’m enjoying the read, but without more pages consumed, I can’t say overall whether I like it or not.  I’ll let you know soon.

The Best of Clarkesworld 2014

written by David Steffen

Clarkesworld has been getting bigger and better.  They’re publishing more stories than ever before and they’re good as ever, publishing more episodes than any of the other podcasts I listen to.  Neil Clarke continues to edit and Kate Baker continues to host and usually narrate the podcast.

 

The List

1.  “The Clockwork Soldier” by Ken Liu
I enjoyed this story so much, moving science fiction story involving text adventures (like Zork).

2.  “The Magician and LaPlace’s Demon” by Tom Crosshill
Probability magician vs near-omnipotent AI.  Great stuff.

3.  “Fives Stages of Grief After the Alien Invasion” by Caroline M. Yoachim
Another great one by Caroline, aliens that look like frogs but are intangible mists start making deals with Earth.

4.  “The Meeker and the All-Seeing Eye” by Matthew Kressel
Omnipotent super-AI finds a drifting human eras after the rest of humanity has gone extinct.

5.  “The Saint of the Sidewalks” by Kat Howard
Its the rituals that make a saint.

6.  “Seeking boarder for rm w/ attached bathroom, must be willing to live with ghosts ($500 / Berkeley)” by Rahul Kanakia
Pretty much what it says on the tin.

7.  “The Sledge-Maker’s Daughter” by Alastair Reynolds
Hard to describe the parts I liked about it without spoiling it…

Honorable Mentions

“A Gift in Time” by Maggie Clark

“Stone Hunger” by N.K. Jemisin

“Cameron Rhyder’s Legs” by Matthew Kressel